Attention

The browser or device you are using is out of date. It has known security flaws and a limited feature set. You will not see all the features of some websites. Please update your browser. A list of the most popular browsers can be found below.

But analysts say each time a suspect is convicted with the help of DNA evidence, it helps to break down the assumption that rape victims lie about their assaults, a long-held notion that may have kept some rape victims’ evidence kits from being DNA-tested.

The law is named for a woman from Williamsburg, Virginia, who was dragged from her home by a masked stranger and raped in 1989. The evidence from her sexual assault evidence kit was not tested until 1994, which helped the police almost immediately apprehend her attacker.

Rights advocates say they struggle to understand why such a staggering number of kits go untested, even after assault survivors go through a lengthy and uncomfortable physical exam to gather the forensic evidence.

Alexenko, of Natasha’s Justice Group, said there’s no single reason. It’s a combination of outdated technology, a lack of training, and the persistent belief that people may not be telling the truth about their rapes, she said.

In 1993, while still in college, Alexenko was robbed at gunpoint and raped in her Manhattan apartment. Although an evidence kit was prepared, DNA technology wasn’t as advanced as it is now and her kit wasn’t tested until nearly a decade later.

In New York City, which accumulated a 17,000-case backlog between 2000 and 2003, matching the DNA resulted in 200 prosecutions, according to the District Attorney’s office. The arrest rate for rapes in the city, which now tests every rape kit for DNA evidence, jumped to 70 percent from 40 percent after the policy was adopted. That’s compared with a national average arrest rate for rapes of about one in four, according to RAINN.

After Alexenko’s case rape kit was finally tested in 2003, the DNA matched that of a suspect who was caught jaywalking in Las Vegas in 2007. He was convicted and is serving a 44-to-107-year sentence.

“The data doesn’t lie,” Alexenko said. “We see how it does make a difference.”

Some rights advocates have also blamed a lack of testing on what they call a culture of indifference about sexual violence, exemplified by the five New Orleans police detectives in the Special Victims Section — which investigates sex crimes, child abuse and domestic violence — who were accused Wednesday of mishandling cases in that city.

The detectives failed to write investigative reports for 86 percent of the 1,290 sexual assault or child abuse calls they were assigned to investigate from 2011 to 2013, according to The Times-Picayune newspaper. These included the case of a toddler who tested positive for a sexually transmitted disease, and another that involved a child who complained of abuse by a registered sex offender living in the same building, the newspaper said.

Karen Owen, executive director of Natasha’s Justice Group, said frequent leadership turnovers at police departments can also mean that policies to address backlogs don’t get implemented. “There’s just a million reasons, but now that we’re aware of it, we’ve got to take care of it,” she said.